Adidas’ Liquid Billboard Advertising Campaign Wins Outdoor Grand Prix At Cannes Lions

The Liquid Billboard advertising campaign from Adidas has been awarded the Outdoor Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

The campaign, from Havas Middle East, catered to Adidas’ inclusive swimwear collection which was designed specifically for women of all body types, abilities, and backgrounds, encouraging them to swim in public settings regardless of any characteristic.

Representing Adidas’ first swimmable billboard, a tank was placed on a beach in Dubai with one of the sides of the tank acting as an active transparent billboard so the swimmer could look out and onlookers could look in.

The front of the billboard was emblazoned with the words “beyond the surface,” partly targeting the fact that swim campaigns in the past had been solely fixed for people with stereotypically athletic physiques and supermodels.

The production team placed underwater cameras in the tank so every individual that decided to come by and swim was projected live in Dubai on the Emirate’s largest digital display.

Further, bespoke posters of the individual swimming were printed and handed to each swimmer.

Speaking on the innovative campaign, InMotion Media Group CEO, Chava Mercado, said, “There are so many unique and fun ways to implement billboards, I think the age-old standalone billboard will become obsolete in the coming years. There are fresher and more exciting ways to do things, as is evidenced here.”

Mercado’s company, InMotion, is a mobile billboard and advertising company that found success in 2020 during the pandemic, garnering the company seven-to-eight figure revenues per year consistently and also increasing Mercado’s net worth.

“Traditional billboard inventory is limited, it is one-sided, it is stationary, it is expensive, and it is restricted by city ordinances and reduced to locations allowed for billboards.” He said.

“People tend to pay more attention to things that are in-motion, therefore our InMotion truck ads are seen more by potential customers. We won a national award for the best outdoor ad in 2021 for one of our law firm clients.”

On what InMotion is currently using and new and existing technologies that could influence the industry, Mercado continued, “We brand 53 ft and 26 ft trucks to advertise. Through GPS beacon technology, we are able to match the mobile device IDs of anyone who sees your truck advertising, and we retarget them with a matching digital ad through different social media channels and thousands of websites, on their phone, tablet, or laptop.”

“We are available across the entire U.S. and have 3 main products. 53 ft semi-trucks, which are great for freeways and maximum exposure, 26 ft box trucks, for streets and local markets, and 11 ft LED trucks for special events and conferences. This helps create very localized branding. Our competitors slap a logo on a truck and call it a day. We offer an experience for our clients.”

With a history of work on the brand side for Fortune 500 organizations such as Nintendo, PepsiCoPEP
, DirecTV, and Essentia Water – until it was acquired by Nestle – Mercado says he has a keen sense of what brands are looking for moving into the future.

“It has to be interactive, distinct, and different. It has to cut through the clutter and grab your attention.” He concluded.

Through the growth of technology and new means of development, advertising throughout media should continue to be a very public case study of the digital-based development of society.